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Troubles in Philly, Lessons for New York?

By J. David Goodman December 1, 2009 3:15 pmDecember 1, 2009 3:15 pm

David Swanson/Associated PressRiders gathering on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum in May.

The animosity that some cyclists and pedestrians feel for one another — well-documented in comment wildfires on this blog and elsewhere — simmers just below the surface of shared urban streets, as seemingly inevitable a part of city life as the steam rising through manhole covers. Just as inevitably, every once in a while these tensions boil over, usually in response to a coincidence of tragic accidents.

Seen from New York, our neighbor’s response offers a window into how a bicycle-friendly city acts when the bike-ped conflict — esoteric to the concerns of most city dwellers — is suddenly thrust into the public eye.

“In all of these cities — New York, Philadelphia, Chicago — we’re still in the early stages of fitting bicycles into our transportation system,” said Wiley Norvell, of Transportation Alternatives.

The two accidents occurred in the span of a single week in October, and left two men, Tom Archie, 78, and Andre Steed, 40, dead. In the case of Mr. Steed, the cyclist involved did not stop and has not been found. Anecdotal evidence of other collisions quickly sailed around online, as did the story of a third accident, which left an otherwise bike-friendly woman with a fractured skull.

In response, the police descended on central Philadelphia on Nov. 19 to issue tickets to bikers for riding against traffic, on the sidewalk or through red lights. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia also sent a team of “bicycle ambassadors” to encourage riders to follow the rules.

“The police, council members and bike ambassadors are working to address the chaos in the streets,” said Breen Goodwin, coordinator of the city-sponsored Bicycle Ambassadors program. But the press “is really bringing the issue to the forefront,” she said. Her program, which usually runs only from May to September, has called back several ambassadors to help respond to the growing tension.

Indeed, even in the service of moderate policy prescriptions, strong language has been the order of the day.

Death by “two-wheeled hazards,” the Philadelphia Inquirer editorialized last week, has “focused attention on an old problem: reckless cyclists who ignore traffic rules, ride on sidewalks, and zigzag among pedestrians.” The paper called for greater enforcement of existing traffic laws in the city, where police issued only 14 tickets to cyclists for moving violations last year. In New York, Mr. Norvell pointed out, the number of tickets handed out is “an order of magnitude larger” with no difference in results.

“The solution isn’t a million tickets,” he said. “The solution is ultimately a shift in behavior to more civic-minded cycling. We have a huge opportunity right now in New York city. There are tens of thousands of new bikers on the street and they’re malleable, they don’t have bad behavior ingrained.” The answer, he said, is better cyclist education.

Yet some in Philadelphia saw the accidents as an opportunity to inveigh against the idea of bicycles as a part of urban transportation.

“Can we be real? Bicycling is good recreation, good for the environment and for the waistline, but it will never be a serious mode of transportation in and around Philly,” wrote Stu Bykofsky, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. He also criticized Mayor Michael A. Nutter’s decision this summer to have the city give equal consideration to bikes in future transportation efforts. (He added that the mayor had, somewhat against the laws of physics, “helped turn frosty relations between cars and bikes into a grease fire.”)

A city council bill proposed this month in response to the deadly accidents contains a provision for ticketing riders up to $1,000 if their bikes do not have brakes, seemingly a direct response to the growing popularity of fixies on Philly streets. (In another version of the bill, riding a fixie would result in the bike being confiscated.)

The council has planned hearings on the matter of bicycles in Philadelphia and what action, if any, to take. But in an effort to ease the temperature of the debate, those hearings will most likely not occur before January.

“The message these city council members is sending is: We don’t want people riding bikes,” said Mark J. Ginsberg, a Portland, Ore., cycling lawyer who helped draft the state’s bike laws. In Oregon, there had been similar legal confusion over the status of fixed gear bikes — whether the act of pedaling backward constitutes a brake — and Mr. Ginsberg sought to add language to specifically address the issue in 2006. “What got shot down was the extra ‘and a fixed gear has a brake,'” he said.

Mr. Ginsberg said that most states have adopted a standard definition of bike’s brakes that is technology independent, a “make it stop in distance” standard. “No where does it say what the brake should look like; it only says what it should do,” he said. In most states — though not New York — the rule is that a bike moving at 15 miles per hour must be able to stop in 15 feet, something that is “easily done” on a fixed gear by riders of all levels, Mr. Ginsberg added. (New York State law still contains the older “make it skid” language: “Every bicycle shall be equipped with a brake which will enable the operator to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level, clean pavement.”)

“Fixie riders argue that the fixed gear hub functions as a brake when backwards pressure is applied to the pedals, and that they are capable of meeting the required performance standard for stopping,” said Robert Mionske, author of Bicycling and the Law. “So far, that has tended to be a losing argument in traffic courts.”

There have not been other attempts to legislate fixies off city streets, Mr. Mionske said. “In fact, Washington D.C. has gone the other route, and embraced fixies, by revising their bicycle ordinance to specify that a fixed gear hub is a brake.”

Follow Spokes on twitter, twitter.com/spokesnyt, where links to the column will appear along with other bike-related tweets.

There are definitely problems with how bicyclists ride their bikes. One of the most dangerous, though, is where bicyclists ride on sidewalks. Why would bicyclists prefer to ride on bumpy sidewalks instead of smooth streets? Here the answer is obvious: because it is often very dangerous for bicyclists to drive on the streets. Part of that is inevitable, but part is driver attitude. As all the news about road rage makes clear, people tend to become very impolite and aggressive when driving, in a way they would never be when interacting with others when walking on a sidewalk, say. This is especially bad when they relate to bicyclists. Drivers are so used to seeing cars on streets, not bicyclists, that they become territorial and view bicyclists as infringing on driver’s turf and rights, becoming very aggressive. I’m almost always a driver, not a bicyclist, but I’ve seen this from both ends: definitely as a bicyclist, all the time, but also a bit as a driver – there’s something surprising and a little alarming about something else to negotiate other than cars, and I can see how for some that would translate to anger, especially when they need to slow down for a bicyclist. The reason I don’t act angry toward bicyclists, though, is because I stop and realize that they actually do have a right to the road, too, that they’re polluting less, that they’re not causing traffic jams, that (on the streets) they tend to endanger themselves more than others (though to the extent that they endanger others, they should obviously be held responsible). It is the lack of awareness and respect of drivers that forces a lot of bicyclists onto the roads. So if we’re concerned with pedestrian safety, not to mention bicyclists’ safety, we’ve got to educate drivers, too, so that they’re polite to and mindful of bicyclists and bicyclists can stay on the streets.

i have no problem with cyclists when they obey traffic laws. But I’ve nearly been run down several times by cyclists who felt they could simply proceed through a red light without checking for pedestrians first.

I really wish cyclists would encourage each other to stop at red lights, but this seems unrealistic when every day – every day – I watch cyclists sail through traffic lights without the least bit of hesitation.

As a frequent bike rider in NYC I have close encounters with Pedestrians almost everyday. Unlike a lot of riders though I never run reds, ride on the sidewalk, or go against traffic.

However, Pedestrians in NYC (I must say, myself included) never wait for the walk sign and frequently pop out of parked vehicles to cross in the middle of the street. Even if I have the right of way, and even if a Pedestrian sees me coming they will frequently cross my path assuming I will brake.

I am no bike apologist, but I am just saying that NYC pedestrians are infamous rule breakers themselves (alas, my pedestrian self included)

This article assumes bikers are breaking rules, but as the previous poster point out, pedestrians (and motorists) are not infallible.

As a rule-following bike commuter in Montreal, I use defensive driving daily to avoid potentially deadly encounters with vehicles that turn without stopping for bikers and pedestrians who don’t look before crossing.

To illustrate the case, a situation with a jaywalking pedestrian resulted in a friend undergoing emergency surgery for ruptures intestines. The friend made an emergency stop to avoid the pedestrian and in doing so, uncontrollably crashed his abdomen into the handle bars.

Pedestrians and motorists also need education for co-commuting with bikers.

Bicycles are a wonderful means of transportation, but carry similar risks to pedestrians as cars. Increased regulation to ensure safety, though invasive, is necessary. I would support annual safety inspections and registration in the same manner as cars. Knowledge of bike laws could be tested when a biker obtains a registration. Preemptive action is far more effective than punitive traffic tickets.

seriously – i had to read that ‘sixth borough’ line like 5 times before i realized the author was in fact talking about philly (as mentioned in the headline). bikes need more bells – they don’t seem to be the cool thing to do, but they work in europe for alerting pedestrians about oncoming bikes.

Stu Bykofsky represents the vanguard of the anti-bicycle movement and the only reason that he’s at the forefront is because of his privileged position as an op-ed columnist of one of the major papers read in the city. His columns have no factual basis and are full of poorly reasoned arguments that have impact only because they’re so sensationalistic. While he may represent the boiling anger of some people in the city, cycling is here to stay in Philadelphia and if gas prices go up and SEPTA (the public transportation system) keeps on striking, there can only be more cyclists on the road.

Unfortunately, other than, perhaps, the mayor’s office, city council, most citizens, and the city’s major media outlets have not contributed in a material and constructive way towards resolving this major safety issue.

The bottom line, from my perspective, is that people need to be more civil–drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. Drivers drive recklessly which translates to the newly-minted (and many formerly driving) cyclists riding recklessly. Pedestrians lack the patience and the good sense to make sure the coast is clear before crossing the street.
Also, well-considered improvements to the existing infrastructure can’t hurt (and more than likely, benefit) the debate.

Nonetheless, this will probably never rise to the forefront of the debate, at least in Philadelphia, because politicians and the press in this city seem to care more about the political & media spectacle than anything else.

Scofflaw pedestrians or not, I’m a cyclist and I fully advocate for yielding to pedestrians as often as physically possible. They’re more vulnerable than bikers.

The elephant in the room is that cyclists and pedestrians have to compete for the tiny fraction of space not dominated by cars. For the past few decades the streets have been overrun by car-friendly planning – wide streets, long lights, narrow sidewalks, no protected space for cyclists. Thankfully this is beginning to change. Until it does the streets will continue to be a jungle.

i ride my bike on manhattan streets, sometimes i do it for fun, sometimes i do it for errands, sometimes i do it for work. people walk on lanes that are clearly marked for bicycles next to cars, especially around 42nd street. so i yell at them to get out of the way, i even hit a nurse once, not on purpose but i didnt apologize. pedestrians need to realize that if a bike hits you, itll be worst for u not the bike. ill hit and run just like the guy who killed the old man!

Let me echo the remark on the six borough. We are definitely not that, though New Yorkers are welcome to Philadelphia any time.

A lot of what is happening in Philly, in my mind, is the kind of over reaction that occurs when ever something as rare as a bike-related death happens: the response is often out of proportion to the incident. Rather than hike fines or increase enforcement of just bike laws, there really ought to be an increase of enforcement of all laws to make the streets safer for drivers, pedestrians, and bikers. This will necessarily mean that people in cars are going to have be ticketed more (no more parking in bike lanes, no more speeding on city streets, or running lights, things drivers do with far more frequency — and get away with far too often — than any other “player” in traffic). And we have to do away with the notion that drivers are entitled to the road. We all pay taxes, we all pay for the roads. We’re all entitled to use them safely. And people in this town way over reacted to giving bikes a full lane of traffic on Spruce Street; most of Chestnut and Market Streets have a dedicated lane for buses and bikes, and have had them for years. Of course, keeping those lanes free of cars has never been a high priority. If the city enforced existing laws and street sharing, there would be less reason for bikers to use the sidewalks or break the law.

Stu Bykofsy’s attitude is what will keep bikes from being accepted as a serious mode of transportation. I ride to work in NYC daily, and while I do consider it good for the environment and my health, not to mention fun, I don’t consider it “recreation.” My bike is how I get to and from work every day.

In addition to not making any sense whatsoever in any circumstances (there’s a reason they’re called TRACK bikes), street-riding fixies also suffers from an unfortunate excess of fashionability, which inspires neophytes to risk their neck in the hopes of fitting in.

I can’t help but think “fashion victim” every time I see someone on a fixie. And I live in Williamsburg.

But unlike wearing skinny jeans and oversize glasses, the rider isn’t the only person to suffer potential injury…

Fine if you want them for tricks, but get yourself a flip-flop hub and a wrench and ride freewheel in traffic.

A) I agree with Margaret. New York WISHES it could lay claim to the awesomeness that is Philly.

B) I’ve had more close calls with bikers than I have with drivers, and in a city known for its drunk and reckless drivers that is saying something. Particularly in my neighbourhood (South Philly) there are constantly bikers on the sidewalks, making ME stop with several bags of groceries in my hands so they can cruise on past. It’s called a sideWALK, not a sideBIKE.

It’s really quite simple and in fact common courtesy to bike with traffic in the street and mind all stop signs and lights. I don’t even ask that you actually stop completely at all of them, but make sure you slow down enough to really see if anyone else is coming and have time to stop.

However, in the bikers’ defense, I think the city needs to step up its efforts to integrate more bike lanes because the columnist who said bikes have no place in Philly transportation is dead wrong. This is a geographically large city with not-so-great public transportation options. I’m one of the few people under the age of 30 I know that doesn’t have a bike, and it’s only because I’m so clumsy I wouldn’t stand a chance on the street. A lot of people can’t afford to live near where they work, and given a choice between a 10 minute bike ride on ones own schedule, or a 15 minute production on a jam-packed city bus, it’s a pretty obvious decision.

First, what Margaret said. We are not your sixth borough. The worst thing that has happened to Philadelphia in the past five years is the influx of New Yorkers (ok, that’s wrong: the failure of the economy and losing to the Yankees). We don’t want to be you.
Second. I want Philadelphia to support bicyclists. Although I don’t commute on one now, I have in the past and hope to again one day. But — twice in one week riders on the sidewalk nearly knocked over my three-year old child. Bicyclists ride against traffic, on the sidewalk, and circle in intersections so they don’t have to put a foot down, risking pedestrians crossing with the light. If they want equal rights, they need to have equal responsibility.

Why oh why would you dredge up Jessica Pressler’s 4 year-old, widely-derided “sixth borough” article? Even the author herself admitted it wasn’t remotely factual: “The sixth borough concept was a good way to introduce New Yorkers to what’s been happening in Philly. It’s kind of like when you give a dog a pill you wrap it in something you know they like, such as cheese.” I’m not even sure what that analogy means, but I know that it’s stupid.

Let’s get something straight. Philadelphians don’t “sometimes refer to their city, somewhat deprecatingly, as the sixth borough of New York,” unless “Philadelphians” means “a couple of bridge-and-tunnel wannabes who Pressler met once in a bar” and “sometimes” means “for the purposes of Pressler’s inane article.”

Look, I read the NYT for national and international news. But I don’t appreciate being talked down to when you guys do arrogant, patronizing pieces on my hometown.

In many European cities, where bicycle use is much higher, the requirements for a legal bike are also much stricter. Berlin, for example, requires both a front and rear light as well as brakes. The police often set up checkpoints to catch riders in violation of these rules.

Philly has a deeply ingrained culture of reckless, angry, me-first driving. We’re just not used to seeing reckless drivers on bikes.

Center City, Phila has recently seen a boom in cycling. I predict the current anti-cyclist hysteria will die down as we continue to become a more bicycle-friendly city and folks get used to seeing more bikes on the road. Although, a better traffic enforcement plan by the Philly PD (against everyone, motorists and cyclists alike) would go a long way toward smoothing that transition.

There is plenty of blame to go around, and there are plenty of psycho bicyclists (psycholists?), but both as a pedestrian and as a cyclist in New York, the carelessness, recklessness, and lack of consideration I observe among pedestrians is endlessly amazing. Not to mention their total disregard for bike lanes. Even when marked as such with words and images (illiterate I can understand, but what are you, unpicturate?), bike lanes seem to be a magnet for joggers, moms with strollers, drivers, etc., and if you have the temerity to point it out to them, you’re the bad guy. *I* don’t ride on the sidewalk. Please don’t jog/walk your dog/push your stroller/park/drive/hang out in the bike lane. Honestly.

I’ve ridden a bicycle in NYC for the last 15 years. I used to be an aggressive rider, but have mellowed some with age. With that said, I can’t completely stop riding aggressively because I am wrestling for space on the streets with cars and trucks – keeping up with traffic so I don’t get run down and doing what I can to seize space so I don’t get swiped. It is a mind set that is primarily directed at self preservation and unfortunately can mean that I might occasionally be dangerous for walkers (when I’m up against a taxi, I’m not worried about hurting the taxi – unfortunately, walkers are not as resilient). Whenever I can, I take streets with bike lanes because it makes life riding that much easier (though cars still are not respecting our lanes all the time) and I am more relaxed resulting in a less aggressive riding style. If we had more dedicated bike lanes in the city, I wonder if that would help to ease bikers minds and get more people to tone down the aggression?

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